


Goodnight Demonslayer

by dragonofdispair, Rizobact



Series: TFPrime Shattered Glass AU [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Shattered Glass
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-25 11:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4959400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/pseuds/Rizobact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TFPrime Shattered Glass AU: Halloween…Cliffjumper’s never been particularly religious or superstitious, but a whole new universe may require a whole new perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Spirits of Rust and Other Hauntings

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween Everybody! My favorite holiday ever… so this year I’m celebrating with a special Halloween story. Music, creepy stories, creepy war-torn Cybertron…what more could you need to celebrate this scary day? I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Song mentioned but not credited in the last chapter is “American Soldier” by Toby Keith and I’m saying it here so that I don’t have to break the spooooky narrative to do so there.
> 
> Have fun! Trick or Treat!
> 
> *Rizo whispers* Happy Halloween! :D Enjoy the fun spooky stories!

_Have you seen the Ghost of John?_

_Long, white bones and the flesh all gone!_

          — Kristen Elise Lawrence _“Have You Seen the Ghost of John”_

.

.

“And where do the two of you think you’re going?” Cliffjumper was not a high-ranking Autobot on Cybertron. He supposed he might have been on Earth — Prime’s team and all, even if his presence was more chance than earned — but not on Cybertron. As such he’d never had the chance to engage the Decepticon second in command personally before the day he’d met Arcee and together they’d broken Shockwave’s space bridge. Still, Starscream’s voice was more than familiar enough from Decepticon propaganda that it grated now.

Grimlock’s on the other hand was only marginally better, for all that he at least had been a well-known Autobot in Cliffjumper’s own world. “Taking the newbie down to feed the ghost.”

In other words, prank the Autobot from a different dimension. Cliffjumper held some small hope that the Decepticon Air Commander would put a stop to it before he was bodily dragged to wherever this “ghost” was and ambushed in an attempt to “scare” him.

No luck. Starscream just looked them over critically and nodded. “Carry on.”

Grumbling about nasty Decepticons who were only slightly different than their alternates, Cliffjumper followed Grimlock.

This part of Kaon was quiet, almost abandoned. Their own footsteps echoed in the darkness. Whoever was behind this prank had planned it well, at least. Buildings crumbled, rusting away where their metals had not been scavenged to support the War or make repairs to more vital areas of the city. The air was thick with the dust of various oxides. So thick was the dust in some places, that it was obvious what paths the Decepticons used since it wasn’t as thick in those areas.

The large dull green bot stopped at an intersection and gestured one direction. “The old gladiator pits are down that way. There’re ghosts there too. Dead gladiators, mostly, but some others. Megatron takes care of them himself, so you won’t ever have to go down that way to make offerings.” Cliffjumper scoffed quietly and the dinobot shrugged. “Don’t have to believe me. Just do what you’re told.”

“I will.” No matter how stupid it was when energon was so scarce that Grim couldn’t even transform into his dino form to waste energon feeding the local wildlife.

“Good. This way.” They followed the other path through the dust.

The scent of slag and old fires grew stronger as they approached the abandoned smelting pit. None of the automatic doors worked anymore as they made their way toward the pit. Lights flickered as they triggered motion sensors, but ultimately failed to turn on. This didn’t seem to surprise Grimlock, just telling Cliff to use his headlights if the dark bothered him. 

“It’s not the dark. It’s the Primus-damned _flickering_ ,” he snapped back, irritated with himself that the smelting pit was getting to him, despite his determination to endure the prank stoically. 

Grimlock just chuckled and led him to the largest of the empty crucible-pits. The catwalk the had once spanned the great pit had long ago rusted to nothing, but a crude table of debris had been set up at the edge. On it was an empty energon cube and pair of depleted light-crystals. 

Perfunctorily Grimlock cleaned up the altar (it couldn’t really be anything else) then set out a new cube and pair of crystals, then without so much as a prayer, turned away.

“That’s it?” Cliffjumper couldn’t help blurting out.

“Yeah,” was the laconic answer. “Ain’t a prank. Just another duty. War’s made a lot of ghosts and we just don’t have the resources to put them to rest all nice and proper. Mostly they ain’t nowhere close enough to bother living mechs. Soldiers that’ve died on the battlefield and stuff like that, but these’re close enough to prey on the mechs back at base so we do our best to just keep ‘em quiet.”

“Huh.” They walked in silence for a while, making their way out of the smelting pit and back to where the two trails through the dust diverged. He paused and looked down the one Grimlock said led to where Megatron himself went to appease the dead gladiators. “So what’s up with the ones at the smelting pit?”

Grimlock hesitated. “Sure you want to know?”

“Back home,” a nice, neutral way of referring to another universe entirely, “we’ve got all sorts of ghost stories, but no one believes any of it.”

The dinobot just nodded like this made sense. “You’ve still got your gods. They protect you, I bet. We lost ours a long time ago.” Cliffjumper wasn’t sure what the gods could have to do with relative reality of ghosts, but he didn’t argue. For all he knew it could be true. “Let’s get back to base before I tell you about the ghosts. We need to be somewhere away from the dust or they’ll hear us and it’ll attract their attention.”

“Dust?”

“When we get back.”

It was a quiet tense trek back.

The only room of the Decepticon barracks that met Grimlock’s definition of dust-free was the officers’ conference room. It took some cajoling to convince Soundwave to let them in, but apparently educating the newbie about Kaon’s supernatural dangers was a good enough reason to let the two into an otherwise restricted area, with supervision in the form of Laserbeak.

Grimlock set out three cubes of the weak low-grade that made up the Decepticons’ rations. “So, ghosts.”

“Why couldn’t we do this in the rec room?” Was Cliffjumper’s first question. “What the Pit does _dust_ have to do with ghosts?”

“Not all ghosts. Just these.” He stared moodily at the cube before taking a draft. Grimlock, because of his size and energy intensive greatsword was accorded larger rations than most of the rank and file, but it still wasn’t enough for him to be able to transform into his even more energy-intensive predacon form. “Should start at the beginning. The Autobots’ first major attack of the War was intense, well-coordinated. Orion-Optimus had convinced most the world the Decepticons were violent terrorists. Probably some truth to that, in the beginning, so the council, the _world_ , believed it and that first attack was an overwhelming strike. Vicious. We wasn’t going to give up our city to a betrayer. Not easily. Battle lasted ninety-seven day and night cycles before the Autobots took the city and occupied it. Lots of soldier ghosts left behind, but we still had the resources to take care of them proper then; they ain’t what the story’s about."

“Anyway. Battle lasted ninety-seven days. Autobots occupied Kaon for a hundred and ninety-nine days. And after holding the city for forty-three days, Optimus threw one-thousand and thirteen mechs, prisoners of war, resistance fighters, civilians, in that pit and smelted them. Then after forty-seven days, he did it again. This time a thousand and thirty-one. Prime, numbers, see? Was a big wake up call for a lot of Cybertronians. Lotta mechs joined the Decepticons after that. Had enough soldiers to take back the city. But that wasn’t no comfort to those mechs smelted into one solid piece."

“‘Cause their bodies were just one piece of slag, we couldn’t get their spirits out properly. They’d fused. Their embers became one with the metal. Tried remelting the metal, but it was no use. Couldn’t use it, neither. Besides being haunted, it was impure as slag and the chunk that was left in the crucible-pit was cracked and brittle and would just crumble in your fingers. Rusted through real fast too. And the spirits, fused into one ghost by the smelting, followed the dust. Really nasty. They—it started causing problems everywhere, anywhere the dust could get. Finally figured out it was still centered on the smelting pit and it liked crystal lights. Left a couple there and it didn’t wander too far, long as they weren’t hungry, but talking about them can catch their attention. Like someone calling your name from across the room, and we don’t want them wandering too far from the smelter.”

A giant clawed finger tapped Cliffjumper’s cube and suddenly reminded of it, he downed the energon in one long pull. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but this didn’t sound like the sort of stories common back home. Those were all about remote locations and told by mechs whose stories couldn’t be corroborated after the fact. Grim was talking about a widespread haunt that had once affected most of Kaon. The Decepticons probably had records…

Cliffjumper shivered. “And the gladiator-ghosts?” he asked when he had control of his vocalizer again.

Grimlock hedged. “Those’re older, and you gotta ask Megatron about them if you want details.”

Yeah. _That_ wasn’t ever going to happen. He made a note to avoid the old gladiator pits anyway.

***

He wasn’t in the brig, and for that alone Cliffjumper couldn’t really complain. These Decepticons wanted him on their side, so no brig. His indoctrination came in the form of polite appointments with Soundwave, which, yeah… It was _Soundwave_ , but all in all everything really could have been worse. And he’d done cleaning duty before. He hated it, but there wasn’t a single bot in the history of ever that didn’t so it was just another unpleasant task in a long line of them. That he wasn’t complaining about.

Even if the janitors were weird as _slag_. 

“What the Pit is that?” he snarled, gesturing to the macabre decoration hanging over a bank of security computers. 

“Pit?” Particle, the janitorial shift supervisor, who was here helping and supervising because this was sort of a restricted area, said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one as a cuss word.”

“It’s —" hard to explain to an atheist. “Never mind. What the _frag_ is a dead turborat doing hanging here?”

Particle looked over, optics going to the twisted, rusted corpse, then the computer directly beneath it. “That’s Snoopy — because it monitors sub-operating system activity in the other base computers for unusual occurrences, viruses and stuff, one of that fragger Jazz’s favorite hacking tricks; it snoops. Snoopy… right.” He fidgeted a bit. “Sorry. I saw Cliffjumper on the battlefield once and it was,” he shuddered, “so I’m just babbling because I’m nervous.”

Now Cliff felt bad for even talking to him. “S’fine. Don’t worry about it. Just tell me why you’ve got a dead turborat here?” A _really_ dead turborat. This thing was more rust than metal at this point.

“Right?” Apparently deciding the best cures for nerves was work, Particle went back to polishing the computer banks. “So when we first installed Snoopy, it was top of the line. One of the last of its kind to roll off the assembly lines. Irreplaceable. Except it crashed, constantly. Took less than a breem to bring it back up and no one could ever figure out what was wrong with it. If it weren’t so fragging irreplaceable someone would have slag well replaced it. Finally… and this is according to Afterglitch’s notes on it…as a complete joke, he brings a turborat in and after fixing the slagging thing, stabs the rat and hangs the corpse above the computer. Reenacting one of those ‘religious rituals’ you see in cheap pornloads about ancient barbarian-mechs that never existed. Thing was, Snoopy stopped crashing after that.

“At least until a new janitor came in and cleaned up the ‘mess’. Less than a breem later… crash. IT sent up a really irate Afterglitch who fixed it, did the whole thing again and etched ‘don’t touch my turborat’ on the wall right there.” He pointed to a section of the wall above the computer, where it could be clearly seen by anyone contemplating the dead turborat. It was blank, but there clearly had been something etched there a long time ago. “Couple thousand vorns of scrubbing kinda erased it since it wasn’t etched very deep, but now literally everyone knows about Snoopy and the turborat so we don’t need the sign anymore. Thing hasn’t crashed since, even a couple of times when all the others were practically slagging their own circuits with the number of Autobot logic bombs crawling through the networks.”

Cliffjumper stared at the turborat for a long moment, then muttered, “ _Primus_ you people are weird,” before going back to his own scrubbing.

.

.

.

tbc

 


	2. The Howling Dancer’s Court and Other Reasons Not to Go Outside

_You’re talking about day; I’m talking about nighttime_

_When monsters call out the names of men_

          — Crüxshadows _“Ballroom on Mars”_

.

.

Cliffjumper shot out of his seat and into a combat stance, targeting system engaging, ion cannons warming, only to run smack into a wall. Not a physical wall, but a wall of programming. Chains of ones and zeros. His weapons were still disabled, and he honestly couldn’t fault the Decepticons. Even if he weren’t the mirror image of one of their enemies, _his_ reflexes viewed them as enemies. Accidental shooting was a no, not happening.

To their credit, Thundercracker and Skywarp looked embarrassed to have provoked him. The bright blue seeker gave him an apologetic smile and Skywarp helpfully righted his chair while Cliff brought his combat systems under control.

“What do you two want?” was probably not the most polite greeting he could have gone with, but his targeting system was refusing to disengage and it was making him irritable. They deserved it anyway.

They exchanged one last look. Thundercracker shrugged. 

“Laserbeak told us you didn’t know about the ghosts,” Skywarp offered. “Was wondering if there were any other gaps in what you know. You weren’t carrying any charms against the Dweller, or the Grey Render or various ghosts when Big Grim found you. We—“

“You,” Thundercracker corrected.

“ _We_ ,” the bright purple seeker glared at his trinemate, who glared back but didn’t correct him again, “thought you might like us to fill in the blanks.”

“He wants a chance to tell scary stories,” the blue seeker said, “since everyone around here’s sick of them.”

Skywarp glared. “It’s _important_. What if he’s caught by the Howling Dancer or something, cause he don’t know to carry the proper charm.”

“‘Warp, you’re the only one on the _base_ that carries charms against the Howling Dancer.”

“Guys…” Cliffjumper tried to interrupt, but they argued over him.

“And when it starts luring people away, I’ll be the only one here to say ‘I told you so’.”

“Guys.”

“Oh,” Thundercracker threw up his hands in frustration, “for Prime’s sake! It’s not going to start luring people away, because it _doesn’t exist_.”

“GUYS!” Both turned their clear blue optics to look at him quizzically, having almost forgotten he was present to witness their spat. “What’s a Howling Dancer?”

Skywarp gave his trinemate a smug, superior look. Thundercracker rolled his optics. All three of them settled back around the table, the blue seeker putting one hand over his optics. He looked like he might have wanted to invoke Primus for patience, but of course he didn’t. Skywarp just looked gleeful.

“The Howling Dancer is a mechanism, but not a normal one, not like you and me. This one’s ancient, a survivor of the cataclysm that wiped out the predacons. It looks like a giant turbowolf and its howl can be heard leagues away. But you shouldn’t listen too close, because its howl ensnares the minds of those who hear it. It lures them to the beast and they’re never seen again!”

“Okay…” Cliffjumper leaned away from the suddenly too-close seeker and at the same time tried really hard not to bump into Thundercracker. “Just one question: why’s it called the Howling _Dancer_?”

“Dunno,” Skywarp shrugged, calming and backing out of Cliff’s personal space as he did so. “It just is.”

A beat of awkward silence, then “It’s a holdover,” the blue seeker said suddenly with a resigned sigh, “from the versions of the tale from before the discovery of predacon fossils. The Howling Dancer, or more properly, the Howling Dancer’s _Court_ , was a less monstrous, more mysterious story back then. The creature — always a turbowolf, but whether it was a transformer or just a large magical version of the creatures depended on the home region of the teller — presided over a court of feral mechs. Its howl lured transformers out into the wilderness, where they would join the circle of ferals, drinking, dancing, interfacing, etc… until dawn. At which point — again dependent on region — their victim would either disappear with them, now a permanent member of the court, or get torn to shreds and eaten, and not always by the wolf.” Both Cliffjumper and Skywarp stared at the other seeker, who shrugged his wings in mild embarrassment. “PHD in comparative mythology. Before the War, I was a teacher at the University of Vos.”

Cliffjumper sat there, trying to process the seeker as anything but one of the Decepticon Elite; Skywarp of course was unfazed. “That’s a way scarier story than the predacon one. Do my charms still work?”

“The charms don’t work because the Howling Dancer _doesn’t exist_.”

“So what happened to your gods?” Cliffjumper jumped in before they could start fighting again. “To Primus and Unicron? Grimlock said you’d ‘lost’ them.”

Thundercracker just sighed. “No one knows. There’s a divide in the archaeological record, like the one that marks the predacon catastrophe. Before it — temples, altars, the whole works, though all the names of gods have been erased. Just blank spaces in the middle of etched prayers, spans of corrupted data on otherwise intact disks, things like that. After the divide — nothing of religious significance at all, except the occasional warding charm like those Boltbrain,” he flicked his wing over Cliffjumper’s head to smack Skywarp gently across the helm, “here carries.”

“Huh?” Cliff picked up his now empty cube and stood, “Well, thanks guys. I’ll talk to you later, right now I need to report to Soundwave for more interrogation and indoctrination.”

The purple seeker burst out laughing and nearly fell from his seat. “Frag! Strong’n’Silent would be _devastated_ if he hear you call your debriefings that.” He cackled again. “Can I tell him?”

“No,” Thundercracker snapped before Cliff could reply. “Don’t mind him,” he addressed the red Autobot, already dragging his hysterical trinemate away. “And don’t be late on our account.”

All told, Cliffjumper preferred the seekers to Soundwave, but Autobot or Decepticon, whatever your ‘verse, you did not piss off your superior officers.

***

Runabout and Runamuck had seen him talking to Skywarp and Thundercracker and they cornered him in the training room. Cliffjumper had been hissing and spitting like an angry cat, cursing his lack of weapons until Laserbeak had shown up and the four of them had calmed the situation down. The two impulsive melee fighters got punishment detail; Cliffjumper got to listen to the two of them tell their scary stories in that weird, confusing way of twins where they switched narrators seamlessly every few sentences.

“Howling Dancer’s a joke,” said Runamuck. “But there’s places, not just things but _places_ , you have to watch out for,” Runabout finished.

_There are stories of these places as far back as our history remembers. Most people don’t venture into them and insist there’s some sort of natural cause. Those who want to believe in gods say that their existence is proof of their vengeance for forgetting their names, or that, having lost our gods we now lack the guides who would take us to the after life and prevent such places from forming. Regardless of the reason, they have become a more common haunt since the War began. Some warriors seek them out for their power, but there is a danger in that that can turn a warrior against their comrades._

_Watch for a garden of exquisite crystals. Every shape. Every color. Every size, from as tall as buildings, to small enough you need microscope additions to your optics to see them. Certainly crystal forests occur naturally, but these simmer with a deep abiding hunger for vengeance, for these crystals grew from the spilled energon of the brutally slain, from the rust of those fallen in battle. There is a malevolent consciousness that seeks to convert mechs by enticing them to accept their twisted symbiosis. Such places seek out champions to avenge the misdeeds that formed them, and those who accept undergo a profound transformation. Such is the lure and the danger, since these crystals aren’t equal partners in the relationship._

_The candidate visits, and if the mech swears to rain vengeance on those who slew the embers at the hearts of the crystals, the metal of his body turns to crystal and they become unstoppable warriors. We have slain such creatures, who came at us for the slaying of Autobot embers. But unstoppable as they are physically, there are no thoughts in their minds except to wreak energon-soaked vengeance on behalf of the crystals._

_And if you think that’s scary…_

_There are places buried in Cybertron so deep that no light has ever shone there. Buried beneath miles of metal no one has been to these places and returned sane. No light shines in these places and no light can ever shine. Your biolights disappear and your headlights will reveal only an impenetrable black wall. Exploring the place by touch will reveal only that everything is covered in pale dust that clings to your joints. There is no sound, no movement, no signs of life. Just complete and utter darkness._

_Soon the darkness’s hunger for light will start to consume your very ember. Death comes if you cannot find your way out before it takes all your light completely, and if you die there, your body will not properly rust but will decay into that strange, pale dust. And if you find your way out… well it’s said that you’ll still have left part of yourself behind, for that strange hunger will have consumed it._

_As horrible as it to contemplate having a piece of your ember snuffed, you will carry a piece of the darkness back with you, buried in your frame. One day, without warning, you could just disappear consumed by that tiny piece of darkness and when people go looking for you, the will only find that strange dust left behind._

_So newbie, be sure and watch where you step._

.

.

.

tbc


	3. Fragments of Memory and other Figments of the Imagination

_The doll is in your house and in your room and in your bed_

_The doll is in your eyes and in your arms and in your head and you are crazy_

          — Jonathan Coulton _“Creepy Doll”_

.

.

When he’d called his sessions with Soundwave “interrogation and indoctrination”, Skywarp had acted like Cliffjumper was making some kind of fantastic joke. He'd only half meant it as one, but he'd let it go without trying to explain why "Soundwave" and "interrogation" was such a natural association. For one, the mech in question _was_ grilling him for details about where he was from and what the War was like in his world around lessons on the same for this one. For another...well, it was _Soundwave._

Of course, these were the "good" Decepticons, so perhaps grilling was too strong a word. Especially since he didn't actually talk - Cliffjumper wasn't sure if that was a personal choice (the Soundwave he was familiar with had always just acted like he thought talking was beneath him, the arrogant fragger), or if, like Bumblebee, he'd been injured at one point and the medics had been unable to fully repair him.

There was a slight drag in one of his strangely articulated legs that argued for the latter. It wasn't much, not enough to cause his footsteps to falter, but Cliffjumper had noticed it when the mech popped up out of nowhere in the corridor several days ago. He wished they'd stop doing that to him. _How the slag does a mech with light blue and white plating with a limp manage to move that silently and invisibly anyway?_

Even if this Soundwave had never done anything to actually threaten him, Cliffjumper still found the mech seriously creepy. His faceless stare was pretty off-putting, and the idea that he could be watching pretty much anywhere you went on the base either via Laserbeak or on the surveillance system didn’t help one bit. Cliff was pretty sure that even if the purple seeker kept his promise and didn't tell him what he’d said that Soundwave would find out anyway. Somehow he always seemed to know _everything._

 _Hopefully he won’t be offended,_ Cliffjumper thought, coming up on their usual meeting place in the monitor room. He was just reaching for the door when he received a brief databurst containing a partial map with a small room a short distance away highlighted. There was no message or signature attached, but then, there didn’t need to be. _Okay, so he wants to meet somewhere else this time. That’s strange._

It wasn’t a long walk, fortunately. Cliffjumper would have been annoyed if Soundwave had waited until the last minute to change locations if he’d had to backtrack across the entire base. More annoyed than he usually was about these meetings, anyway, though he did his best to hide it as usual when he reached his new destination. This time when he raised his hand toward the door it swung open before he could make contact with it. The room beyond was small and dark, and Soundwave stood from where he was seated at a small console along the back wall. He didn’t turn to face him.

Cliffjumper entered hesitantly, processor whirling as he tried to figure out what Soundwave was planning. It wasn’t until the door shut behind him and the lights came up that he noticed they weren’t alone. Laserbeak was perched on a monitor above Soundwave, and on a table to the mech’s right was –

“What is that?!” The question was out before he had a chance to think better of it, and he was regretting it already in the time it took to say it. “Sorry – _who_ was that?” he amended quickly.

Larger than Laserbeak but not as big as minibot, there was a small grayed frame propped up against the wall on top of the table. It looked like a miniature mech, arms and legs in a resting pose and a tiny helm with a dull, lifeless visor angled toward the door. Despite clearly not being alive, it gave the impression of staring at him and Cliffjumper found himself unnerved by the expression on its face. The small smile it wore was somewhere between peaceful and pained.

Soundwave didn’t look back at Cliffjumper or react beyond lifting a slender digit to point at the screen in front of him. A series of images began flashing across it as he moved his other hand on the keyboard. Silent still shots and clips of video with distorted sound blended together in such rapid succession it took the Autobot a moment to understand what he was looking at. He felt as though he should have made the connection faster once he got it, but the cheerful, animated mech on the monitor was so unlike the cold, unmoving frame on the table that he had trouble believing they were one and the same.

Almost as if he’d somehow sensed Cliffjumper’s comprehension, Soundwave changed the montage. Now the pictures showed two of the tiny mechs, identical to each other except for their paint schemes, and even more of both of them together with Laserbeak and Soundwave. The way they interacted together, the physical affection and easy rapport between the smaller mechs, _symbiotes,_ Cliffjumper realized, as they played while Soundwave watched affectionately from the sidelines made their relationship obvious.

“He was part of your cohort,” Cliffjumper guessed. “They both were, him and his twin, just like Laserbeak.” He stopped, not sure what he was supposed to say at this point. _Why is he showing me this? What brought this on?_

“ _You didn’t know about the ghosts._ ” The sudden echo of Skywarp’s earlier statement cut through the soft laughter in the video as it froze on the two matching mechs smiling over a shared cube of energon. Cliffjumper fought down a shiver, both at how it sounded when Soundwave filtered and repurposed words that weren’t his own to communicate and the way he had once again seemed to know exactly what he was thinking without him needing to ask out loud. “ **Just blank spaces**.” And that had been Thundercracker; what the Pit did Soundwave mean by that?

“Are you talking about what I don’t know about this world?” Cliffjumper tried. “Look, everyone around here’s been sharing all kinds of stories I never asked for when it comes to ghosts and monsters.”

“ **WAR'S MADE A LOT OF GHOSTS,** ” Soundwave repeated Grimlock as he turned at last, slowly bringing his flat, blank face around to regard Cliffjumper with hidden optics. “ _MOST PEOPLE…FORGETTING THEIR NAMES..._ ” Cliffjumper recognized the flattened sound of Runamuck’s voice – or was it Runabout? – in the playback. “ _Fill in the blanks._ ”

Glyphs flickered into view on Soundwave’s mask only to fade as Cliffjumper read them. “Rumble…and Frenzy.” He glanced at the grayed frame. _Which one is he? What color was he in life?_

“ **The names of gods have been erased. Just blank spaces** ,” Soundwave repeated, both he and Laserbeak looking more subdued than Cliffjumper had ever seen them.

The pieces fell into place. “You’re afraid they’ll be forgotten too. You’re afraid of their memory fading as time passes.” Cliffjumper felt an unexpected surge of pity for his not-enemy and what he’d been through. He knew without asking it must have been horrific.

Whether in answer to the unspoken question once again or just out of a need to tell the story, Soundwave spoke again in Cliffjumper’s own voice. “Rumble…smelting pit.” He hung his helm slowly, shaking with remembered pain. “ _Caught by_ \- **THE AUTOBOTS** – Frenzy – _EMBER SNUFFED…WITHOUT WARNING._ Soundwave – _found_ – !!” Laserbeak chirped in distress when the words disappeared behind static, shuffling restlessly.

“You found Frenzy after he was already gone,” Cliffjumper finished, feeling somewhat awkward about stepping in but also concerned over how upset Soundwave was getting. _Maybe that’s why he doesn’t talk. He’s grieving too much,_ he thought. “There was no way to get Rumble’s frame back, but you kept Frenzy’s so you’d still have something to remind you of them.” It wasn’t the kind of memento Cliffjumper would have chosen. He didn’t really think it was healthy, but then, he wasn’t exactly in a place to criticize.

“ _Not just_ – **COMFORT** _…not just_ – memory…” Soundwave said, straightening as another bank of monitors powered up at his command. It looked a lot like a surveillance setup, different sections of the base including some areas outside it and even the room they were standing in displayed on multiple screens. Unlike the actual surveillance in their usual meeting room, however, these screens were laced with what looked like feed errors and filters that didn’t make any sense. Transmission receivers and analyzers ran alongside them, spitting out patchy bursts of static between harsh blats of sound that made them appear to be broken as well. Cliffjumper found himself at a total loss as to what any of the equipment was for or why it had Soundwave so energized. “ _LEFT PART OF [SELF] BEHIND_ …you see in – **corrupted data** : _PROOF OF [THEIR EXISTENCE]!_ ”

Cliffjumper blinked, positive he’s misheard. “You…don’t think they’re really dead,” he said slowly. “You’re keeping his frame here…for him.” He tried not to let his tone give away how crazy he thought that sounded. _Okay, now I_ know _he’s not handling this in a healthy way!_

Soundwave didn’t seem to notice the direction his thoughts were going this time, pointing to the main screen where he had replaced the frozen picture of the twins with pages from different technical manuals eagerly. The text explained what each device along the wall was supposed to do, and having had to learn Soundwave’s preferred report format in the event he was ever allowed on a mission, Cliffjumper recognized the style immediately. “You built these yourself, then wrote up the manuals,” he said, stating the obvious. “What are they for, exactly?”

“ **[TO] SEE** – _SIGNS OF LIFE,_ " came the response. Soundwave gestured as he enlarged the camera feed showing a hallway in a rainbow colored spectrum of light and pulled up what looked like regular security footage next to it. The second picture was perfectly empty, while the first showed the outline of a mech made up of coruscating colors standing in the same empty hallway by an air vent. “ **TO** – _hear_ – them [talk]! _”_ He turned the volume up on one of the discordant receivers, fiddling with dials as he looped the feed and amplified different layers and frequencies until it almost sounded like Cybertronian speech. Almost.

Cliffjumper fought down the conflicting urges to bury his face in his hands and groan or burst out laughing. Was dutiful, serious _Soundwave_ of all mechs really telling him he’d built a whole room full of _spirit detectors_ so he could sit in here with a grayed out shell and commune with the dead? _Primus, every time I think this place can’t get any weirder!_

He was trying to think of something he could say that wouldn’t upset the slightly manic mech in front of him when Soundwave suddenly went still, a blinking light in the corner of his face mask indicating he was receiving a message before he powered everything down instantaneously. The mask appeared to dim with the screens and Cliffjumper couldn’t tell if that was just from the loss of reflected light or if Soundwave had actually installed filters in his own frame that he was shutting off as well. At this point he didn’t think he could safely rule that out.

The sound of the door opening behind him startled him out of his thoughts. “More…later,” he heard his own voice saying from Soundwave’s speakers as Laserbeak swooped past them. Soundwave motioned for him to follow. “ **WORK** – to do – _NOW_.”

As they left, Cliffjumper tried very hard to ignore the way Frenzy’s dead stare followed them out into the hall, his head almost seeming to turn. The opaque visor appeared to flicker for just a moment with a sourceless light in the completely darkened room as the door slid shut on his smile.

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tbc


	4. Zombie Viruses and Other Body Snatchers

_It forces your body to seek uninfected_

_And add them to the diseased_

          — Abney Park _“Virus”_

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Cliffjumper cycled his optical lenses a few times, adjusting the focus in an attempt to understand what he was looking at. The exercise gave him slightly better resolution and highlighted the poor shape of the materials – standard iron fittings rusted and needing replacement, a common polysteel composite casing warped and dented from long use, and a typical carbon filter far past due for a cleaning – but no explanation of the unfamiliar structures adorning the energon dispenser at the back of the commissary was forthcoming. At first he’d assumed the machine’s odd appearance was just due to its rundown condition; like so many things in this place, it had clearly seen better days. But the peculiar glint of green that had made him look closer instead of just taking his low-grade ration back to the table wasn’t a random patch job, and neither were the gold filaments and mica chips he could see through a crack in the casing where two panels no longer quite met.

These were deliberate modifications, but they served no purpose that Cliffjumper could make out. Yet another mystery, another way these Decepticons and this place was the same yet alien to the displaced Autobot. He wondered whether or not to bother asking about this one. Sometimes his hosts were disturbed by his questions and hesitant to answer, assuming he was after information to sabotage them despite multiple reassurances that he was nothing like the Autobots the twisted mech calling himself Prime led. 

He shook his helm, turning away to return to his seat. He was no engineer, and even if he had been that same mistrust would have kept him from being allowed to try anything to improve the dispenser even if he’d known what he was doing. _Bet it’s what’s making the energon taste different though_ , he thought, bring his cube up to take a sip and grimacing. _And changes the texture._

“Something wrong?” Skywarp’s voice floated over, halting him in his tracks. Cliffjumper turned to face the purple seeker, fingers clenching against the sides of the cube instinctively for just a moment before he forced them to relax. Skywarp didn’t seem to notice. “You were making a face.”

“It just doesn’t taste like what I’m used to,” he replied. “I mean, I’m not expecting high grade or anything, but…” he shrugged his shoulders as he paused, trying to come up with a more politic way of saying that the stuff was fragging weird. “Guess it’s just a little rougher than what we had on Earth.”

“I miss high grade,” Skywarp said, his face taking on a slightly dreamy cast. “Did you have that on Earth too?”

“When we could sneak enough of the regular stuff to refine it,” Cliffjumper grinned. “Bulk – I mean, one of the mechs I knew built a small distillation unit and kept it hidden away so that we could indulge every now and then.” He managed to stop himself before he said the former Wrecker’s full name. “Had to be careful about it, but yeah. Sometimes.”

“That’s so cool!” Skywarp smiled. “I used to have one but it broke and I couldn’t find new polishing pads and there’s no _way_ I’d drink anything that hadn’t been reverse-cycled and properly damped. Can’t be too careful, you know!”

Careful of what? _Probably another one of those superstitions he’s so fond of_ , Cliffjumper thought. Though Skywarp's harmless eccentricities wouldn't explain additional equipment for a dispenser used by the entire base, and he was coming to realize that in this place some of those superstitions were more than just stories. “Is that why there's all that extra stuff in the dispenser?” he asked. "What is it filtering for?"

“Extra stuff?” Skywarp seemed confused. “There’s nothing special about it, it's just a regular back-up filter in case something in the refinery malfunctions. If anything got through it'd be terrible!”

“I mean all the gold strings and things inside next to the carbon filter, which really needs to be cleaned by the way.” Cliffjumper said.

“Oh those! Those aren't extras, they're super important! Wow, you mean you don't know you need a VAC ban to process energon either? I mean, it's one thing not believe in the Howling Dancer like boring ol' TC, but this's really basic stuff!" Skywarp said not-helpfully, walking over to take a look. “Ew, you’re right, the membrane is totally clogged. Someone needs to take this down to – say! Why don’t you do it? Then she could tell you all about it! I have to leave for patrol or I'd do it myself, but this way's better! She's really cool and knows all kinds of other neat stuff too!” He had already flipped over the ‘Down for Repairs’ notice on the dispenser, well-worn edges and faded lettering indicating just how often that particular sign got used. The heavy component was out of the machine and being shoved at Cliffjumper before he could even begin to ask.

He was forced to take it or let it drop as Skywarp let go of the filter and made for the door, presumably headed out for that patrol. “Hey, wait! Take it where?” Cliffjumper called after him.

“Oh! You go down to maintenance, follow the signs for the refinery, then go past it to the corridor on the left and knock on the second door. Just ask where the Lair is if you get lost!” he said as he disappeared.

_The Lair?_ Cliffjumper wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, but Skywarp was already out of the room. He glanced between the cube in one hand the clogged filter in the other before huffing a sigh through his vents. Downing the cube so he could carry the frame in both hands, he left the commissary and started down the hall. _They probably won’t let me get all the way down there anyway._

Contrary to his expectations, however, no one stopped him. Cliffjumper made his way down following Skywarp’s directions to the plain, unassuming door without being interrupted. He paused for a moment before deciding he might as well go ahead with it. _I’m already here,_ he thought as he tapped on the door with his foot.

“Come in,” a voice purred behind it, smooth and rich. Cliffjumper startled, remembering that Skywarp had said _she_ would answer his questions. Femmes were as rare amongst the Decepticons as they were for the Autobots; whoever she was, there was a good chance he’d recognize her, and just as good a chance that that would be a bad thing.

“My hands are full,” he said, trying to mentally prepare himself for whoever opened the door. 

He failed utterly. The filter clattered to the floor as he backed away and reflexively raised his arms, trying to online weapons he no longer had access to. His whole frame tensed as the spindly black and lavender femme leaned forward to angle her upper body into the hall, bracing herself against the doorframe with a warm smile just edging into a smirk curving her painted purple lips.

“Cliffjumper,” she said, a note of pleasure suffusing her voice. “How wonderful to finally meet the mech I’ve been hearing so much about.” She pulled back slightly, gesturing to the room behind her. “Please. Enter.”

He couldn't move, frozen behind the inhibiting code as every chip in his processor sparked angrily with the memory of his partner and what this Decepticon had done to her.

"It wasn't me," Airachnid said suddenly. "Whatever you're thinking of right now, it wasn't me. No more than what my memory tells me you did was really you. Would you hold my double's actions against me?" Her expression sharpened. "Choose wisely. I can always return the favor."

The red warrior finally managed to get himself under control. Of course it hadn't been her, couldn't have been her. All the same, he had trouble forcing a polite tone from his vocalizer as he spoke. "Skywarp said I should bring that down here," he said, indicating the fallen filter, "and he said I should ask about what something called a VAC ban is for?"

"Ah." She retreated further. "Be a good mech and bring it in for me. It's awfully heavy to manage all by myself."

"But I can manage it by myself?" Cliffjumper growled.

Airachnid fixed him with a look. "I can assist, if you really want me to get that close," she said. "But I thought I was getting the sense that you would prefer I kept my distance."

Since she was right he didn't bother correcting her. Instead, he bent down to pick it up and stepped reluctantly through the door. Looking around he realized that 'lair' really was the best word to describe it - shelves lined the walls, sagging under the weight of their contents. Odds and ends spilled over onto several small workstations and one large slab, which Airachnid was currently clearing to make room for the filter. Despite the gloom that hovered over everything in the form of a pervasive mist and low lighting, the room was filled with color. A riot of glowing distillations in strangely shaped decanters intermingled with several objects that looked reminiscent of the charm Skywarp had shown him the other day, and Cliffjumper realized that Airachnid was probably the one who made it.

He set his burden down and stepped away as soon as there was space. Pink optics regarded him thoughtfully before the femme lifted a tray of tools, some still bearing traces of unidentifiable substances along their edges, from beneath the table and set to restoring the filter.

"This isn't the VAC ban," she said after a stretch of silence. "This is just a standard carbon filter for larger impurities. The mechanism to prevent VAC contamination cannot be removed from a dispenser or a distillation unit and must be repaired on-site." A large clot of congealed energon fell free and splattered against the decking. "If you don't know that much, is it safe to say you don't know why it's necessary either?"

Cliffjumper bristled. "Excuse me, but things are different here. You can't expect me to know about things I've never heard of before! How about you just tell me what in the name of Primus VAC even stands for?"

"VAC: vitrifying alginate compound," she replied blandly. "A naturally occurring contaminant that infiltrates liquid energon and, if consumed, attacks and destroys the elements in your processor." Her voice took on a slightly malicious tone. "But it doesn't kill you. You become trapped inside your own frame as it overwhelms you, converting your systems to respond to its input and controlling you, leaving you a helpless passenger as it uses you to spread and infect new hosts."

With a jump up onto the table she hovered predatorily over the dripping dismantled frame of the filter, the glow of the potions behind her backlighting her body and giving each limb a different hued halo. "Energon pours from your mouth and leaks from your seams as you shamble through the halls while your ember continues to burn. Nothing can cure you once it makes its way inside you; a single particle is all it takes and you are lost, buried beneath the sentience of its hive mind!"

A dark chuckle filled the room, echoing off the containers to chill the energon in Cliffjumper's lines. Then, as if the moment had never been, the specter above him shrank and became Airachnid once more, the chuckle warming into a teasing laugh as she stepped to the side of the table to take down the hose of a pressure washer. "It's incredibly dangerous, but fortunately it's also incredibly rare. It's also very simple to screen for and eliminate in the refining process, as long as you have the right equipment. Never drink unfiltered energon unless it means your life not to, for it could mean your life if you do."

Cliffjumper didn't know how to respond to that, so he didn't. Airachnid flushed out the filter and returned the hose to its place before speaking again. "You find it difficult to believe, don't you?"

That one at least he could answer. "Some of the stories I've been hearing seem a little bit too over the top to be true," he said.

"Oh? And your tales of gods aren't? That was the name you said before, wasn't it - the name of your god."

"Our creator and protector, Primus," Cliffjumper said. "But I've searched and searched, and no matter where I look I can't find his name."

"Hmmm. You don't believe our stories, and yet you expect us to believe He is real simply because you say so." She wiped down the frame and began reassembling the filter.

Cliffjumper ground his denta. "I don't need proof that Primus exists to know that He does!"

"Then stop looking for proof," she admonished. "You'll just keep digging up more horrors with your search. Shall I tell you another?" The wicked cast was back in her optics. "There's another monster out there that will trap you inside yourself if you chance to encounter it. Beware when wandering the wastes! Never speak to the dead that lie there, for you might happen upon a corpse that will rise to return your words!"

She retrieved a small talisman from the shelf and held it out before her. "Do not let your curiosity get the better of you; it will repeat whatever you say, but the more words you feed it the faster it will take them until suddenly it is the one feeding words back to you." A small crystal at the heart of the talisman caught and reflected the blue of his optics back at Cliffjumper like a miniature spark. "Through your words it will absorb your life, pulling all the fire from your ember through the air to steal a second chance for itself. But it will not give you one! You will slow, and fail, and fall. In the end, your frame will take its place on the ground and the wastes will reclaim a new corpse."

Cliffjumper snorted. "That's ridiculous."

"That's ridiculous," Airachnid mimicked.

"And that's pathetic, I'm not afraid."

"And that's pathetic, I'm not afraid."

"You made that up to scare me!" his voice rose as hers fell. 

"You made that up to scare me!" she whispered.

" _Stop it_!" His optics flared as she spoke the words with him, and suddenly he was afraid. Anger quickly rushed in to smother it and he started to draw back his fist.

"What's going on?!" The loud exclamation cut through Cliffjumper's fury and he managed to catch himself before Thundercracker had to do anything. Fortunately the blue seeker looked alarmed rather than angry or Cliffjumper might have wound up trying to target him next. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine," Airachnid said smoothly, stepping away to lay the talisman back on the shelf. "We were discussing ways that a mech could lose himself inside his frame. I think Cliffjumper just felt the need to assert his control over his - as much as those blocks allow, anyway."

_Oh, that's low!_ Cliffjumper fought to keep his expression as neutral as possible. Thundercracker (this Thundercracker) was a reasonable mech, but if he thought there was any chance of a problem Cliffjumper would find himself back in the brig and he knew it. There was no way he was giving Airachnid the satisfaction since she seemed to be trying so hard to land him there.

"Did you need something?" she asked. "If you're not busy, perhaps you and Cliffjumper could take this back upstairs for me."

"I was just looking for Skywarp and thought he might be down here again," Thundercracker said.

"I haven't seen him. Let him know I have that solution ready when you find him." Without saying goodbye, Airachnid jumped up and transformed, vanishing into the tangle of pipes and ducts running overhead. Thundercracker rumbled an affirmative and motioned Cliffjumper to help him with the filter.

"Airachnid's in charge of a lot of maintenance, particularly the energon filters," he explained. "She can reach all the mechanisms more easily than most and she's got a real talent for it."

"That's not all she has a talent for," Cliffjumper muttered.

Thundercracker heard him anyway and frowned. "You shouldn't antagonize her. She keeps to herself a lot, even when she's not out soloing missions. She's never been very social, and I think having you here is difficult for her."

"It's not exactly easy for me either!"

"All the more reason for you not to interact then. The most anyone usually sees of her is if they go to her lair to ask for wards or charms. Skywarp's down there a lot, which probably doesn't surprise you at this point."

"No it doesn't. He's the one sent me down there in the first place when he found out I didn't know what the VAC ban on the dispenser was." Cliffjumper looked at Thundercracker as they approached the commissary. "Are they real? Those particles it's supposed to filter for, I mean?"

The seeker nodded. "Yes, though the last reported outbreak was several vorn ago and it was quickly contained. Was that what you were talking about when I arrived?"

_They're actually real..._ "No, she was trying to scare me with some monster that repeats what you say to steal your spark-er, ember, I mean. Don't tell me that's actually a thing too?"

Thundercracker smiled slightly. "It is if you're asking Skywarp. I'll tell you what I know about the legend after we've installed this and I find him, if you're still interested?"

"He said he had patrol," Cliffjumper offered.

"Skywarp says a lot of things."

Cliffjumper found himself smiling back. It was nice to know some things never changed.

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_Just nod if you can hear me_

_Is there anyone at home?_

          — Pink Floyd _“Comfortably Numb”_

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tbc


	5. A Story About Energy Leeches and Other Dangerous Wildlife

_Come little children, I’ll take you away_

_Into a land of enchantment_

          — Hocus Pocus _“Come Little Children”_

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The archives in Kaon weren’t as extensive as the ones in Iacon. They never had been, despite Megatron’s best efforts to save all the data he could. And now, with Cybertron on the verge of complete darkness, the data may be there but having the power to access it was another matter entirely. 

Which was why the library was crowded while Cliffjumper did his research. He would have preferred silence and privacy, but it wasn’t an option. Megatron believed that the information needed to be made free for everyone, but idealism didn’t erase the power limitations. As a compromise, the library terminals were powered off, except for a few joors every decaorn during which _everyone_ who had reason to be there did their research and their reading. Cliffjumper surrounded himself with datapads like an improvised barricade against the Decepticons who shared his table. Blitzwing likewise ignored the Autobot, but more because he was busy loading as many volumes of fiction and poetry in his processor as he could to tide himself over until the library opened again. Knockout, likewise was silent, surrounded by twenty vorns worth of medical journals.

After Skywarp and Thundercracker had cornered him in the commissary, the Decepticons had all seemed to decide it was their _duty_ to warn the poor, ignorant, alternate universe Autobot about whatever supernatural dangers _they_ thought were the most dangerous. He’d heard stories of Sparkeaters, diggers and the king Dweller, and dozens of others. 

Some he’d already heard of. Sparkeaters, for example, were almost word for word the legends and horror stories he was familiar worth, save that they mostly crawled through the lower levels of cities, rather than roamed the open areas above ground. Diggers, he also knew of, though the Quintesson-made Dweller who ruled them was a new element. The stories of terrorcons were reframed as _empties_ , who, rather than reanimated by the blood of Unicron where it fell after His banishment, were attributed to some sort of virus or magical curse. Others, like the Garden of Resplendent Crystals and the Hungering Dark were entirely new.

So he was spending the time before the archives closed again looking all these things up, looking for traces that they were more than the over active imaginations of a people who didn’t have stories of Primus to make the darkness less frightening.

Grimlock’s ghosts really had once been a widespread problem, though the reports from the actual time period where it/they were a problem were more ambiguous. There had been several theories which had slowly petered out of existence once the offerings of energon and light crystals had begun at the smelter and the problems had slowly stopped.The universal agreement that the issues were ghost related had come after the fact, when the offerings had apparently worked. But the Howling Dancer appeared no where except in fiction novels and horror vids. The Garden (or Gardens) of Resplendent Crystals were supposedly areas where people had died, and crystal had grown infused with the dead ember’s desire for vengeance and which would reprogram a mech to seek out that vengeance for them. The archives held no reports of the actual Gardens, despite persistent tales of a vast Garden outside Iacon at the site of one of the greatest battles of the War, but there were incidents of mechs turning on their factions, or berserking, and their armor taking on an unexplainable crystalline sheen. Officially these were attributed to Autobot experiments or reprogramming. The Hungering Dark (or sometimes the Deepest Dark), a darkness so complete that it consumed all light including that of a mech’s ember, was only the merest whisper of a tale.  

All in all it was confusing.

Tale upon tale, it was Cybertron that held the horrors, where the surface and sky were safe, where back home it was the reverse. _Down_ was closer to Primus’s spark, deeper into His protection. There were mundane dangers there, as there were across all of Cybertron, but when it came to supernatural protection… _down_ was safer. _Up_ was where, somewhere out in the vastness of space, Unicron was imprisoned. Most of the monsters back home came from or took refuge in the sky.

Which brought him to the other mystery that had him poring through the archives. He found the “divide” between the older, religious Cybertron, and the modern atheists easily enough. It was officially called the Starway Deist-Atheist Changeover Event (Starway being the archaeologist who discovered it). It was also officially called Fragging Weird. According to what little research was documented in the Kaon Archives the researchers had no better theory than mechs had just one day _forgotten_ the cathedrals existed and stopped going. They languished, then were buried.

There was no explanation at all given for the missing names.

“I’m sorry for interrupting you,” Cliffjumper literally jumped out of his chair, this time, though he managed (if by the slimmest of margins) to keep from targeting the massive Decepticon. What was _with_ them and sneaking up on him? And this one in particular… He’d been avoiding Shockwave. He just didn’t know how to _deal_ with a giant yellow version of a high-ranking ‘Con he’d actually fought. “I apologize…” A big silver hand that could have almost wrapped around Cliffjumper’s leg was offered and he waved it away. “I apologize. I did not mean to frighten you.”

 _He still has the giant gun-arm_ , was Cliffjumper’s thought. Which was not a fair thought, but he was a Decepticon. In some ways, Shockwave was _the_ Decepticon. Except yellow.

“Yeah, fine. Forgiven.” Cliff had certainly never claimed to be gracious at accepting apologies. One-eye was lucky Cliff’s weapons were still locked.

“If I may,” the massive ‘Con draped the gun arm over the chair next to him in a move that was obviously supposed to be polite hesitation but only succeeded to in being intimidating. Cliffjumper was proud of himself for casually gesturing to the chair instead of trying to shoot him. He scooted his chair away as subtly as he could before retaking the seat. The big ‘Con’s body language was unreadable as he took the seat indicated. It was that head; Shockwave’s lack of expression resonated down the rest of him. “It has come to my attention you are collecting our myths and legends. Would you do me the honor of allowing me to tell you a tale?”

What was he to say to that? “…Sure?”

“After my empurata I joined an enclave of those in similar circumstances and there were several tales unique to that… subculture, if you will. One of these is the story I wish to share.”

_There was once two bondmates, who lived out at the edge of the rust sea working as prospectors. Each day the two would go out in search of precious metals or deposits of energon and each night they would prepare their meals and go to separate spaces to eat. One of the two, a sturdy tankformer, preferred to eat his meal inside where he could forget about the dangers of the rust sea; the other, a fast ground-car, took his meal just outside their bunker and ate where he could see the stars. There is no place on Cybertron where the stars are clearer than at the edge of the Sea of Rust._

_Well, one night, an energy leech came creeping over the wall of the prospectors’ base camp. At first this frightened the transformer, for energy leeches are common throughout the rust sea and quite dangerous. They come in great swarms and feed on the systems of larger creatures and this one was much larger than the creatures usually grew to. He prepared to kill it, but instead of attacking the transformer, the leech simply drank from his abandoned energon cube and then left the same way it came._

_The next night, when the same leech crept over the wall, instead of panicking, the carformer offered the creature a portion of his cube and when the leech drank it calmly the larger robot shook his head._

_“What sort of creature are you?” he whispered to himself. “You cannot truly be an energy leech if you prefer fresh energon to a living victim. And what do you do when you aren’t drinking out of my cube? Would you like crystals?”_

_The leech of course did not answer and simply left as it had before._

_The next night the energy leech came with a gift, a pure clear Praxan crystal of the sort that the carformer had never seen growing anywhere in the rust sea. He thanked the creature sincerely and offered energon from his cube for a third time and this time also he had a sprinkling of fresh energon crystals of the sort the creature would encounter in the wild. The leech took the energon from the mech’s cube but ignored the offering of crystals._

_When he “found” the Praxan crystal not long after sunrise, both bondmates were overjoyed. The crystal was quite valuable and it had been almost too long since they had last had a significant find and were quite low on supplies._

_And so it continued for quite some time. Always little but needed things. A gear after one of them had stripped one in his arm too far to be functional. A nugget of rare metal. A small bit of etched metal that proved archaeologically valuable. Odds and ends that made the prospectors’ lives easy and comfortable. All the while the carformer continued to feed the energy leech from his own cube and to offer a small number of tasty, unprocessed energon crystals which the leech always refused._

_One night, the carformer, exasperated by this continued refusal, fondly struck the energy leech on its head, scolding it for continuing to pass up its natural food for the processed energon._

_Now their base had changed a lot from the night of that first gift. Thin, sandblasted walls had become thick and augmented with a number of security features. And because of a number of attempted thefts over the years, one of those features was an extensive camera system, all controlled from a central security room in one of the lower levels of the bunker. And on this night the tankformer had decided to take his energon there to consume. He did not see the leech and was not concerned until he saw his mate strike out, whereupon he rushed out to defend his bonded and killed the energy leech._

_From that time forth, everything changed. There was no more gifts and even their luck as prospectors disappeared. Eventually they sold everything they could to feed themselves and so when, though he was young and far from susceptible to such things, the carformer developed a nasty rust infection they could not afford medical treatment. On his last night, he insisted on going out into the Sea and dying under the stars._

_His bondmate died with him, of course._

“That’s complete slag, Shocky.” 

Cliffjumper jerked and focused on the bright blue medic across the table from them. Shockwave focused on the other Decepticon with the same mechanical precision with which he did everything. “Do you have a problem with my story, Doctor?”

Knockout bristled. “Frag yeah I do. Kid doesn’t need your sentimental slag and go out and start thinking he can keep energy leeches as pets. Those slaggers are deadly.”

Cliffjumper growled. “I know what an energy leech is. I’m not going to go looking for them just because of a fairy tale.”

“They’re nasty creatures that live in the muck that forms puddles all around Cybertron and lure in prey with a blue glow that promises energon but instead they crawl under your plating and attach to your fuel lines and drain you dry.”

“I _know_ what energy leeches are,” he growled again, more vehemently. “I also know about diggers, mutated space slugs and scraplets.”

“I have made an extensive study of diggers, do you know about—“

“What do you know about scraplets—?”

Shockwave and Knockout looked at each other. The car spun his wheels; the tank’s chain gun arm ratcheted a chamber in well-suppressed annoyance.

Knockout scoffed. “Fine. Tell him all about the ancient mythical aliens and their equally mythical pets. I’ll just have to give him information that may affect his survival on missions sometime _later_.”

“I know about the Dweller.”

Shockwave focused his huge optic on the Autobot. “Truly? Is this from stories in your home dimension or…?”

“Slamfire down maintenance told me about it.”

“I see.”

The medic trilled in triumph. “I guess that decides it. A lesson on scraplets it is.”

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tbc

 


	6. Gods and Demons and Other Oddities

_I always feel like somebody’s watching me_

_Tell me is it just a dream?_

          —Rockwell _“Somebody’s Watching Me_ ”

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It didn’t actually make any _sense_. 

The names of Primus and Unicron had been erased from the records and eventually forgotten but it _shouldn’t still be happening_. 

Again he wrote Primus’ Name, this time painting it in letters half as tall as he was on the wall of an otherwise abandoned hallway. He watched the paint go on smoothly. P-R-I-M-U-S… then stood back and in between one step and the next, the words faded leaving absolutely no trace of the paint behind. 

He snarled in frustration and only just managed not to whine in fear. This…shouldn’t be happening but it did. On datapads. On sheet metal. Etched. Painted… he was about ready to etch the word into his own plating just to see if that somehow made the difference. He was afraid that if it didn’t, eventually the Names would fade from his memory like they had from mechs’ memories here.

“Disturbing isn’t it?”

What was _with_ these Decepticons and sneaking up on him? Targeting engaged, but he managed to shut it down before his guns tried ratcheting into place to fire and ran into the programming blocks.

“What is?” Technically he should salute and address the seeker as _Commander Starscream_ but he wasn’t sure he could say it yet without either laughing his face off or tearing his own plating off so he didn’t.

“The first time you realize the world isn’t as rational as you thought it is.” Starscream’s voice was still shrill and raspy, but it sounded more like battle damage than the petulance of his alternate. “What are you trying to write?”

“Primus’ Name.” Cliffjumper really had never been much of a believer, but Primus was _Cybertron_. How could you not believe in that, even if you took all the myths and stories — The Imprisonment of Unicron, The First Child, Prima and the Traveller, The Unknown Medic — with a well deserved grain of salt? He’d never been to church or anything, but Primus was…Primus Was. That’s all there was to it, except… he scrawled the name again, fast and angry and frightened and watched it disappear again, as though it had never been.

“‘Primus’…” Screamer—Starscream said it slowly, as though trying out the word. “That’s your god, isn’t it?”

“Yea…” Cliffjumper huffed in frustration. “I’m starting to think He might be _our_ god though. I just can’t figure out _how this is happening_.”

“Shh…” And _Starscream_ was trying sooth him. There was proof positive he was going around the bend and driving into Crazytown. “It’s scary, but unless it’s actively trying to kill you right now it can be dealt with later.”

“What if I forget too?”

“You won’t,” he held up one hand full of thin claws before Cliffjumper could protest. “If anyone was going to forget it, it would be us, right? But everyone you’ve ever mentioned Him to here still remembers. _We_ can say it, so you won’t forget anything.”

It was…exactly the right thing to say. The sympathy surprised him. 

They stood like that for a while, Cliffjumper glaring at the wall while Starscream provided a steady presence. Finally he deflated.

A moment after that he said, “So what happened to you?”

That made the seeker draw up his wings, flicking back and forth anxiously. “What?”

A huff of air and a loud spin of his tires. “I’m not dumb. You said ‘the first time’ which means something happened to you. I’ve been hearing stories from everyone. Might as well hear yours too.”

Again Starscream drew back a bit and for a moment Cliffjumper saw an echo of the cowardly drama queen he’d once fought. _Targeting_ tried engaging again, but Cliff held himself still through the cycle of fighting it down trying not to give an indication of what was happening. This was not a Starscream he should shoot, and he didn’t want to distract the seeker from answering.

Finally, “Look. It’s just a story, right. I’m not that superstitious fragger Skywarp or anything, but I’ve actually run into this thing. Talked to Thundercracker and it’s kinda low-grade persistent thing all over Cybertron; has been for thousands and thousands of vorns. But…” He shuddered theatrically. “It looks like a grey mech. I wasn’t in a position to get a really clear look at it; I think it had wings. It’s just…I should start from the beginning. 

“It’s a creature — maybe a mech, maybe something else — that lives in the depths of Cybertron. Maybe something that’s formed out of the very metal of the planet. Most of the reports only mention it as a pair of golden optics in the dark, a voice that babbles nonsense and brings misfortune. Supposedly if you see it or hear its voice it’s an omen of death or other disaster to come. Sometimes it does something good, but it’s always paired with a personal tragedy. Whatever betrayal will hurt you the most, rather than some general calamity. It actually sounds a bit silly when you say it out loud like that, doesn’t it?”

Starscream pulled in his armor and drew in his wings as though trying to protect the delicate mechanisms from a phantom that wasn’t present.

“I fell. Shot down at the First Battle of the Hydrax Plateau, over the Sea of Rust. Autobot plasma warp cannons. Very nasty. Nearly burned my wing right off. I fell into a crevasse and crashed, wedged in so deep I couldn’t move. Probably spent some time unconscious. When I onlined my optics, one was cracked and my vision was fuzzy, but _it_ was leaning over me. A grey mech-shape with yellow optics looking at me curiously. It clung to the side of the crevasse with unnatural agility. It could have been attached for all I know.

“It crawled down the wall and over me like I was just another piece of rubble and started licking the energon from my injuries away. It talked, most of it was gibberish the rest of the memory was corrupted but I do remember very clearly hearing ‘And I will always do my duty, no matter what the price. I’ve counted up the cost, I know the sacrifice…Because freedom don’t come free.’ Only with a strange cadence, like a poem or song.” He shook his head. “Crazy, right?” He flicked his wings several times again, like one of those nervous little birds back on Earth, each second they didn’t take off and fly away was another moment of indescribable bravery.

“I fell unconscious again. Woke up in medical and was told I was lucky I’d managed to engage my emergency transponder or they’d never have found me. Thing was, I clearly remember the damage report that said the transponder was crushed into about a hundred and seven pieces; it wasn’t going to be transmitting anything. It was strange and unsettling and I spent a decaorn going over everything ever recorded about the Grey Render — that’s what its called — and so I was torn between dismissing the whole thing as a hallucination and waiting for the other pede to drop. And that’s about the time Jetfire betrayed us. So…” He shrugged as though trying to dismiss the whole thing, but Cliffjumper could see how much that betrayal still hurt.

Even among these nicer, more understanding Decepticons, he’d probably been mocked. Which was not what was on Cliffjumper’s mind right now. He shook his head, the plating between his optic ridges furrowing in concentration. Starscream misinterpreted the gesture. 

“Look,” he snapped like every one of his propaganda vids back home, making Cliff bristle before they both controlled themselves, “I don’t really care if you believe me. No one — not a single slagging mech — has since it happened, but I thought—“

That screech was getting painful. Hopefully he wouldn’t get shot for interrupting. “Sorry. It’s not that. Just… repeat what it said to you. Try and mimic the rhythm. It…sounds familiar.”

The seeker drew up, his wings flicking up and down, excited and uncertain. 

“And I will always do my duty, no matter what the price.” The grammar was all wrong, but familiar. The sounds were slow and mournful and unsuited to the Cybertronian words. “I’ve counted up the cost, I know the sacrifice.” Starscream continued to hum a few lines that he either couldn’t remember or the creature hadn’t said clearly. “Because freedom don’t come free…”

He hummed the melody to himself. Once, twice… then it clicked and he sung the thing to himself from the beginning, in _english_. _“I’m trying to be a father. Raise a daughter and a son…”_ He stopped. Shivered. That was creepy as the _Pit_ and _nothing_ was ever going to change his mind about that. Starscream was looking at him curiously, and a bit disturbed. He, too, recognized the melody, if not the alien language. “It is a song. It’s… the name doesn’t actually translate into Cybertronian, but it’s from Earth, which is creepy as _slag_ because no one on Cybertron’s ever been there except…” he stopped, trailed off, then finished the sentence with a sort of resigned determination, “me.”

The power cut out and _something_ cackled from the darkness.

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_This world of ours is not as it seems_

_The monsters are real, but they’re not in your dreams_

          —Aurelio Voltaire _“Goodnight Demonslayer”_

_._

_This is Halloween, this is Halloween_

_Pumpkins scream in the dead of night_

          — Nightmare Before Christmas _“This is Halloween”_

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End

 


End file.
